You’re “pretty certain” that >50% of the students in the top 5% of their respective high school classes score a 1450+? lol ok.
One only has to look at commended scholar results in a given area and use that as a proxy for top 5% to see how incredibly clustered tail end standardized test scores are at a few schools.
Totally agree. Egos get in the way of logic. My D20 decided after an exhaustive search to start at cc to maintain her dream of going to a top UC that would have been an extreme reach as a frosh.
We need to stop looking at “safety” schools or cc’s as “beneath them” but rather a pathway to something bigger.
I agree that, looking at those results so far, the only real outlier is TCU. The other decisions don’t look odd to me.
TCU would be a safety for a LOT of kids from our high school. On our Naviance, there are nothing but green check marks for TCU way down the GPA scale. It would be really odd to be the one red check mark. We know many many kids who were accepted with no score and no APs.
I would push back on the definition of a safety. It depends on the high school.
The Clemson result didnt surprise you? Getting into Rice but not Clemson shocked me. I expect a few more acceptances will come Thursday
Sorry, missed the Clemson decision. Yes, shocker. Interesting that Clemson and TCU both in the south? Maybe for some reason they thought the fit wasn’t there? TCU is a pretty monied place and has a particular culture. And students we know at Clemson find it to be a pretty “southern” and conservative place unlike Rice.
It is a public school. About half from out of state. I would be surprised to think it was a yield protection issue
Haven’t seen Clemson numbers yet, but I have several strong students (4.0+ wGPAs and 30+ test scores) who have had some surprising denials/waitlists there too this year.
Agree TCU a shocker, like homerdog’s school, our Naviance is lots of green, even for some students whose GPAs are in 4th quartile.
If they’re interested in going to TCU, they can have their GC call to see if TCU was a mistake. Sometimes those happen. The GC can also let TCU know the SAT score if needed.
The worst that can happen is they hear back, “no.”
That particular applicant has other good choices already. I am more concerned with how subsequent classes craft a rational application strategy in the face of anomalous results.
I didn’t read what @RichInPitt wrote that way. I read it to mean those with a high SAT/ACT score are practically always in the Top 5% with their GPA - quite akin to my experiences. The correlation can go one way and not the other.
I agree, but their parent seemed to imply TCU was a dream school for them.
With colleges in my neck of the woods, I’m surprised to read of at least one that got waitlisted from CW, but accepted at U Rochester. That might have happened before, but I haven’t seen it in my experience.
Some things always seem to leave folks wondering WTH?
Indeed. And now, there seem to be so many varied opinions about how to craft the appropriate strategy for each applicant for the next cycle - even more than we started with at the beginning of this cycle - as a result of the experiences of this class.
This doesn’t work in some high schools. While the numbers of NMSF and Commended vary a bit from year to year in our district, there were at least 35 total this year. Class size runs about 300, so some must be outside the top 5%. I know my kid is clearly outside the top 5%. I know her GPA, and it is unlikely within the top 25%. (HS does not rank.)
Of my three kids, who all scored 1450+, only one was likely in the top 5%. From a recent year, I see that for the top 25% of the class, which was a 3.99w GPA or better, that the average SAT score was 1476. Lowest 25% of weighted GPA, <3.2, had an average SAT of 1114.
I’m sure there are a lot of schools for kids on CC that are similar, but I don’t think those are the norm out there. I think my statistically average high school is. Could be wrong, who knows?
As I said in a previous post - kids coming from a really good school also have the problem with competing against each other for slots. Kids from schools like mine don’t have that problem. It may be why “average” high schoolers seem to have a hook of sorts. Kids from “good” high schools can have a hook that GCs seem to know AOs, but I’d imagine that only works best for some and not others in the class.
I’m just musing based upon knowing really top kids at my high school seem to rarely get rejections, but on here I see it happening fairly often. We don’t have as many really top (SAT/ACT) kids as y’all have.
Clemson is always wildly popular with out of state applicants, and I thought I read somewhere that Clemson is moving toward giving more consideration to in-state applicants (based on complaints that they are being overlooked for the OOS applicants). Maybe that played a role?
I agree that your HS is likely the norm. However, if a high number of NMSF at a HS is a good indicator of a high number of students scoring 1450+ on the SAT, then you will have students at these schools that score 1450+ but are not in the top 5%.
Going back to the discussion of new norms, I do not like the test optional, especially for large or elite colleges. Tests are a way to set a threshold score for probable success at the college. It doesn’t need to be a high score, just one that demonstrates that you have a sound foundation in math and reading skills.
As you note, kids at high stat high schools can get shut out of certain colleges. I think this will happen more and more with test optional. How can you really tell if a kid from the average HS, with the same courses on their transcript as the great HS kid (and the same or better GPA), is really ready for rigorous college courses? And for colleges that might go test blind, how would the kid from the average or below average HS demonstrate that they are ready for the challenge?
There isn’t a great solution, though if schools keep test optional, requiring students to submit all scores from tests taken would help. That way, you can go test optional, but you have to decide before you take the test. I realize the SAT is changing once again, though at the moment, there are plenty of practice tests out there. Kids can figure out what they will score before they sit for the test.
Clemson admits by major so if a student applies with an intended major in something like engineering, it’s much tougher to get in. I’ve heard from multiple school administrators that you have to be careful about your major choice on your application at Clemson.
For TO, kids who are from mediocre high schools but are super stars will take a standardized test and send it. That’s an option.
I think our D benefitted from TO because our school is indeed a place where the top 20% (easily) score above a 1450. In fact, in our school profile, 27% of kids score above a 33. (That’s about 180 kids). SAT is broken into EW and math. 50 kids above a 750 on EW and 100 kids above a 750 on math. Colleges know that students from our high school can do the work after looking at their rigor and these scores on the profile.
D21 did take tests - both ACT and SAT and couldn’t hit 1450 so she didn’t send. Could she have done better if she wasn’t in the midst of a pandemic? Maybe, maybe not. She was in top ten percent of the class (determined by weighted GPA). So far, her scores have not shown she’s unable to do the work. Doing very well at Colgate. Made deans list. Feels confident in her classes and says she’s participating as much as anyone else and sometimes more.
My point is this. From a strong high school, and if the student has a good GPA with rigorous classes, I’m not sure that standardized tests matter. It would be ridiculous to me for D to not have been accepted to the schools that accepted her had she sent her top score. Her transcript alone was able to correctly predict her ability to do college level work. Those who are upset about TO need to understand that many of the kids accepted TO are just as worthy as their kids who sent scores. They can be just as academically prepared.